Undercover
by Stealth Noodle
Summary: After Oboro departs for Nagarea, Fuyo's Detective Agency takes its first case: running an increasingly convoluted background check on Luserina's new secretary.
1. Day One

**Title:** Undercover  
**Rating:** SFW  
**Wordcount:** 13483**  
Summary: **After Oboro departs for Nagarea, Fuyo's Detective Agency takes its first case: running an increasingly convoluted background check on Luserina's new secretary.

**Note:** Written for the **casestory** Big Bang on LJ/DW. Art by **nickygabriel** available here (remove spaces): i. imgur GWNSo. png**  
**

For Luserina's post-game status, I chose to interpret "new administrator" as "mayor." I also let one of my personal crack pairings out of its cage and into the plot.

* * *

Painting her name over his was the hardest part, so Fuyo had taken care of that first, then propped the sign against the wall to dry. Rearranging the furniture was sweatier work, but less emotionally charged—perfect for Shigure and Sagiri, who, despite their denials, harbored depression in the angles of their jaws and the slopes of their shoulders. Having never quite mastered the nuances of their body language, Fuyo assumed that any mood apparent to her was an extreme one.

So she kept them busy. Shigure complained constantly, like a leaky roof, whenever Fuyo sent him and Sagiri into town to buy cleaning and decorating supplies, but he couldn't grumble and brood at the same time, no more than Sagiri could mope while good-naturedly chastising him. Fuyo didn't have to worry as much about herself; she had never been able to indulge a bad mood when there was paperwork that wanted doing.

They would all three be fine on their own. Fuyo wasn't sure she could say as much for the not-at-all-a-replacement-for-Oboro who had spent the last week nidifying on the sofa, but at the moment she cared less about his emotional stability than she did about his disregard for the finer points of running a business.

Whoever was outside had already knocked twice. Fuyo had no qualms about taking a cheap shot. "Crow—"

"Raven," he snarled, but his heart didn't seem to be in it.

"Fine, then, _Raven_, we have a potential client at our door, and it would be very unprofessional to have someone spread out on the furniture while we're trying to conduct business. Do you follow me?"

Raven scowled and flicked his wrist, becoming a thief-shaped depression in the cushions.

"No, that's not going to cut it. We already have one lazy guy around here—"

Shigure grunted from his napping chair.

"—and we don't need another. Get up, now. Up!"

The cushions plumped back into shape as footsteps padded resentfully into the corner. Fuyo yanked the nearby curtains open, then set on her hands on her hips as Raven popped back into visibility in the rush of sunlight. "There, now," she said, ignoring his glare, "try to look like someone we'd hire while sober, please," and she put on a bright smile as she went to answer the door.

"Welcome to Fuyo's—Euram!"

The Barows boy stood awkwardly on the deck, clutching a satchel and looking as if he had just lost his grip on a more confident posture. Fuyo sometimes had that effect on people. "Hello," he said. "I, ah, was unaware that I had passed into your possession."

The attempted joke fell flat. Fuyo tried to usher him inside before he noticed. "Oboro's away on extended business," she said as he crossed the threshold. "But we can handle even your toughest cases, just the straight facts, reasonably priced!" Fuyo snatched a business card from her pocket and pressed it into Euram's hand, chirping, "Have a seat, won't you? We're doing a bit of remodeling, so please watch your step."

The open buckets of paint seemed to concern Euram most; he skirted wide around them and managed to catch his cape on a nail poking out of a wayward bookshelf. As he disentangled himself, he asked, "When do you expect Oboro to return?"

"Oh, sooner or later." Fuyo hoped her smile didn't betray any nervousness. While Shigure and Sagiri expressed no doubts that Oboro could handle himself just fine against the remnants of Nether Gate, Fuyo had never actually seem him fight anyone, and nearly a decade had passed since he left the organization. She steered the subject back on course: "But the four of us are perfectly capable of handling anything that comes up."

"Four?" Euram hesitated over the chair in which he had been about to sit, letting his gaze flit over the room until it settled on the far corner and Raven, who perched moodily on a box. Euram stiffened. "What is he doing here? That man is a force of harassment!"

For the first time since the arrival of the Barows boy, Shigure looked up from his pipe. "Yeah, we know."

"Hush, you." To Euram, Fuyo replied, "He left a challenge pinned to the door about a week after Oboro left, and he didn't take it very well when we told him that Oboro was unavailable." This was an understatement; Raven had burst out of a shadow and spent the better part of ten minutes loudly redefining words like "honor" and "responsibility" before sobbing on Fuyo's shoulder and demanding to know what the point was now. "I think we've adopted him."

"Right," Raven stage-muttered, "just talk about me like I'm not even here."

Perhaps having decided that a Raven who had not yet commenced harassment would be unlikely to do so in the near future, Euram settled into the chair. Sagiri slipped in from the kitchen, shadow-silent, and set a cup of tea on the table in front of him. To his credit, Euram didn't react with more than a slight startle.

"Rainwall's making wonderful progress," said Fuyo, sitting down opposite him.

Euram tapped his fingers against his teacup. "You have my sister to thank for that; it's all I can do to keep up with the tasks she delegates to me. It's a bit embarrassing to realize that I haven't the slightest idea how the city operates, but I suppose I've only myself to blame." Before the awkwardness had time to settle in, he gave Fuyo an earnest look and said, "Speaking of my sister—"

"Luserina?" came from the corner. Fuyo winced; Raven had a knack for choosing to participate in conversations in the worst way and at the worst moment. "Nice girl, heh. Always liked her."

Euram's eyes narrowed. "My sister," he snapped, his voice edging toward the one he had once used in unhinged tirades against the prince, "would never have had anything to do with the likes of—"

"Please don't mind Crow," said Sagiri. "He likes to hear his own voice." Raven made an affronted noise but wisely fell silent when Fuyo caught his eye and gestured at the storage closet.

Judging from Euram's expression, his outrage over what might have been aspersions on his sister's character hadn't survived Sagiri's frozen smile. He took a sip of tea and fumed quietly.

"So," Fuyo prompted, "how is Luserina? I've heard good things about her work."

Euram set the teacup down and let the intensity rush back into his expression. "I fear for her life."

Deep in Fuyo's chest, excitement fluttered, got its wings sticky with worry, and crash-landed in an urgent need for paperwork. She had a notepad and fresh pencil ready in the time it took Shigure to lower his pipe and say, "We're listening."

Leaning forward, Euram dropped his voice to an urgent whisper. "My sister's new secretary is plotting against her. I'm certain of it! You must expose him before his perfidious machinations succeed!"

"That does sound serious." Fuyo began to scribble down notes before realizing that she couldn't yet manage an outline heading. "Let's start with some details. His name?"

"Alvan." Euram spat the word as if it had tainted his mouth. "Before he came to pollute Rainwall, he lived in Stormfist. Stormfist!" This word apparently tasted even worse. "Luserina said it would be good for relations, but he's clearly a conniving member of the Godwin faction, come to enact a foul revenge!"

In the corner of her vision, Fuyo watched Shigure and Sagiri exchange a look of quiet vexation. She squared her shoulders and pressed on: "So what makes you think he's up to something?"

Euram slapped his palms against the table. "I don't _like_ him!"

His voice rang shrill, but Euram immediately looked so abashed that Fuyo forgave him; after all, only a year ago his outburst would have been taken as an ironclad reason for action. "That is," he said, deflated, "his behavior arouses my suspicion. There's something undeniably unpleasant about that man."

A smoke ring drifted over from Shigure's seat. "Well, they say it takes one to—"

Fuyo cleared her throat. "Is he sneaking around at night? Disappearing every few days?"

"Perhaps!" Euram's face lit up as his grasped straws turned to gold. "I haven't been in a position to observe his movements myself, but it's certainly possible!"

Giving up on her notes, Fuyo tucked her pencil behind her ear and smiled resolutely. "Well, we've done more with less. So unless you have any other information—"

A stack of papers slammed onto the table, topped by a competent pencil sketch of an unremarkable face. Euram peered eagerly over his now-empty satchel. "I copied everything by hand while Luserina was in meetings," he said, arranging the pages into three piles. "Here are his references, which I don't mind telling you were not checked at all thoroughly, and here are his qualifications and application, and this is the best I could do trying to sketch his face through the window. He's very touchy—one might say _suspiciously_ touchy—about being stared at."

In the quick glimpse Fuyo caught of the description sheet, she saw "the black, beady eyes of a weasel" as its own bullet point, followed by "could be concealing a poisoned dagger in that cane." Hoping that Euram had bothered with such niceties as height and build, she said, "I'm sure this will be a big help. And as long as we've got your bag out, why don't we get your payment squared away? Our prices are on the back of the card."

Euram slipped the business card back out of his sleeve and peered at it with some trepidation. "What are 'reasonable expenses'?"

"In case our boat explodes," Sagiri replied.

"Er, does that happen often?"

"Only once so far, and it was actually our client's fault." Fuyo waved to draw Euram's attention away from her investigators, who seemed to unnerve him. "Anyway, we pride ourselves on understanding our client's financial restrictions, and since you've given away your fortune, don't worry about paying the deposit."

Shaking his head, Euram set a small pouch on the table. "No, no, I insist. Use it to protect my sister, please." He hesitated. "By the way, if I may ask another favor, I've already spoken to Luserina about my concerns, and she, well..." He sighed. "Let's leave it that she wasn't terribly impressed. If she knows that you're in Rainwall at my request, I'm afraid that she'll be quite cross with me."

Fuyo beamed. "Oh, that's easy. Rainwall worked out great for us earlier, so we're having our grand re-opening there."

"Ah! Excellent." Euram bowed as he rose, twirling his cape with a flourish. "I can scarcely express my gratitude. My sister deserves far better than I've ever given her, and if I can play some part, however small, in foiling a plot against her, I'll give everything I have!"

"That's very noble of you," said Fuyo, leading him politely to the door. "We'll have an easier time checking his references here in the capital, so we'll leave for Rainwall tomorrow."

As she waved a final good-bye and shut the door, Fuyo heard the clinking of coins and excited whispering that, upon the click of the lock, rose to audible levels. She turned around in time to hear Shigure let out an exasperated, "Shut up!"

"But I should get a bigger cut," said Raven, no longer sulking in the corner. "I'm a master thief, and no one else here is a master anything."

"Incorrect." Sagiri deftly swept the spilled coins back into the pouch and tossed it to Fuyo, who caught it against her chest. Smiling against Raven's blustering, she said, "Don't worry. Fuyo takes good care of our money."

Shigure sighed around his pipe. "Why the hell is he even here?"

"Because he's about to make himself useful," Fuyo replied before Raven could offer his perspective. "Assuming Euram's not just overreacting, we're going to be in for some stakeouts."

Sagiri inclined her head. "Do you think we'll find anything?"

"I think," Fuyo said diplomatically, "that Euram is a paying customer, that his heart is probably in the right place, and that we all might enjoy a little vacation in Rainwall."

Issues of financial distribution apparently forgotten, Raven perched on a chair and grinned. "Just wait till you see me in action. I'm as patient as a cat when I want to be, ah ha ha ha—"

"That's the spirit," Fuyo interrupted. "Sagiri, I want you to take the sketch and the description to the parliament building and see if anyone recognizes him. Shigure, see how many of his references you can trace. I'm going to read over the rest and make sure we're river-worthy. Crow—" She hesitated. He looked more alert than he had at any point in the last week, but Fuyo wasn't prepared to think of him as reliable. "Can you put away the paint?"

He squawked about the inappropriate use of his talents, but Fuyo noted with approval that he at least began rounding up the lids as Sagiri and Shigure slipped out the door. She sat down at her desk, automatically filed a stray expense report, and spread out the pages of Alvan's application. Mr. Mouse emerged from his favorite drawer to scamper up her arm and tickle her ear with his whiskers.

According to his résumé, Alvan's professional history was as unremarkable as his face. Before the war, he had served as the assistant of a minor bureaucrat who oversaw the upkeep of the city's roads. His prior jobs painted him as a professional assistant, probably the sort of person who lurked among the filing cabinets and went unnoticed until he took a sick day, whereupon the office collapsed into chaos. Fuyo felt a faint stirring of kinship.

If she cocked her head into the plane of jealousy and paranoia, she could find cause for suspicion in the sheer blandness of the application. His every position had been innocuous, as politically neutral as Stormfist's bureaucracy allowed. Perhaps he had omitted any work that would have given his potential employer pause, but Fuyo didn't see any gaps in his work history. He wasn't impossible—not even entirely implausible—but to always be the right man in the right place at precisely the right time...

"The paint's gone," said Raven.

Fuyo glanced up to confirm and was unsurprised to see that he had not bothered with the brushes. "Thank you," she replied, turning to root through the boxes of old investigation files. "Now I'd really appreciate it if you also picked up the rest of the painting paraphernalia—" the door clicked shut— "but I'm sure that's asking too much since you've already disappeared somewhere. Well, at least you're outside for a change."

After a little sigh, she continued digging through the boxes until she came to the one labeled "Prince of Falena, K-O." From there she retrieved the folder on Marina. Why the prince wanted an investigation of his friendly and patently harmless innkeeper remained a mystery, but he hadn't stopped with her; by the end of the war, he had requested information on almost everyone whose name he knew. Not even Oboro's four-month entanglement in an ultimately absurd case in Haud had generated so much paperwork. For all his virtues, the Prince of Falena was deeply weird.

Luckily, the prince had never seemed to realize that the average investigation resulted in far more information than was passed along to him. He might well have been thrilled to learn about Marina's first pet and what she liked to eat on her eggs, but he certainly didn't _need_ to know. Detectives were the ones who needed irrelevance, and only so that they could tuck it away until circumstances deprived it of its prefix.

Shigure and Sagiri, no doubt thanks to their childhood training, possessed near-eidetic memories—a disadvantage when trying to leave behind years of waking nightmares, but an advantage in their current line of work. So when Fuyo found in the notes on Marina a name that matched one of Alvan's former employers, she didn't hesitate to accept it as hard evidence.

"Mostly B. again," Shigure had scrawled, pointedly failing to cross his t's and dot his i's. "Nice old man, dinner weekly—worked on roads? Egon Garmund. Dead two years, no fam.

"This is a such a pain," he'd added sideways in the margin. "Who cares?"

Fuyo glanced between the papers and hummed thoughtfully. According to Alvan's application, he was still working for Egon quite some time after the old man died.

It had been a long shot, but Fuyo had learned never to pass one of those up; after all, she lived with people who could throw a fork and pin a fly to the wall. She clipped a note to the application and began to tidy the rest of the office.

* * *

That no one on the Stormfist delegate's staff recognized the man in the sketch was not proof, Sagiri knew. The city's bureaucracy sprawled like a giant mycelium, and her earlier glance at Alvan's references indicated that he claimed no ties to anyone of note. He also had a face made for blending into backgrounds.

No one from Sable or Estrise knew him, either. Undeterred, Sagiri excused herself from another busy office and spotted Shigure in the corner of the lobby, settled deep in a chair.

"Don't bother with Stormfist," he said when she approached. "All his references are dead."

"I checked Stormfist first. No one on staff has seen him before." She nudged Shigure into sitting somewhat more upright. "I wonder how many were dead before he started working for them."

Shigure shrugged. "Everyone lies on those things. At least he was smart enough to lie about stuff so boring only the Barows brat would care." In casual defiance of a nearby sign, he slipped his pipe from his jacket and patted his pockets in search of his tobacco pouch.

"He might be harmless," Sagiri said, politely confiscating the pipe, "or he might not. If you're finished here, why don't you help Fuyo with the boat?" After some grumbling, he agreed to do so in exchange for his pipe, which he abused his fire rune to light on his way downstairs.

Sagiri's next target was the delegation from Beaver Lodge. As expected, she found nothing, but Muroon appreciated visitors and Oboro had always insisted on thoroughness. In Lordlake's office she was greeted warmly by a young aide who remembered her agency's role in revealing the truth behind the town's uprising. It still felt a little strange to be welcomed by anyone outside the agency.

"Chairperson Talgeyl is indisposed," he said, offering her a seat, "but we expect him back soon. I'd be happy to pass along a message for you."

"That shouldn't be necessary." She held out the sketch. "Do you recognize this man?"

The aide peered at it, then gave Sagiri the anxious look of one who desperately wished to be helpful. "Maybe? I mean, it's hard to say..."

"Perhaps this will help." She began to hand over Euram's list of physical characteristics, then thought better of it and read some of them aloud, skipping the worst of the adjectives: "He's rather tall and not especially muscular. He walks with a limp in his right leg, and he depends on a—" here came thickets of inane description— "silver cane with a frog for a handle."

"An animal cane?" A second aide, laden with fat folders, breezed into the conversation as she approached the front desk. "Lord Rovere used to collect those things." She redistributed the weight of the folders and she added several more to the top of the pile. "I never knew what he saw in them, frankly, but I remember one had a crane with pretty little sapphire eyes. Terrible shame," she added, bustling away.

The first aide shrugged apologetically. "My aunt had one with a squirrel on it. It was hideous."

Sagiri considered. "Are they common in Lordlake?"

"Less now than they used to be, thank goodness. They're pretty old-fashioned." Chewing his lip, the aide stared at the sketch for a few seconds longer before saying, "I'm sorry, I just don't think I've ever seen him before. Should I ask Talgeyl when he comes back?"

There was no sense in turning down a lead. After thanking the aide, Sagiri headed for Lelcar's office. Wasil spied her before she'd had a chance to approach his secretary and rose to welcome her.

She had no greater luck here than with Lordlake; Wasil shook his head at the drawing and listened to Euram's abbreviated description without a flicker of recognition until she came to the end.

"A frog-topped cane?" Wasil stroked his chin. "That does ring a bit of a bell. Rovere used to collect them."

"It seems to be our suspect's only distinctive trait. Are they common in Lelcar?"

Wasil shook his head. "They're Lordlake's quirk, and an old-fashioned one at that. Strange to see a man under fifty carrying one." He paused. "Does he walk with a bit of a limp?"

Sagiri cast her thoughts back to Euram's description. "Yes. A 'diabolical' one."

"Well, I suppose that explains the cane, then." He shrugged sheepishly at her sigh. "I'll ask around the delegation, but I know my islets well, and I doubt that he's one of ours."

Sagiri thanked him for his time, headed down to the darkened basement office that the dwarves had made their own. When she opened the door, the rich scent of earth informed her that if a tunnel had not already been dug to Baska Mine, one was certainly in progress.

She picked her way through the gloom to the nearest female dwarf, waited for her to stop hammering a nail into a support beam, then tapped her politely on the shoulder.

"Light-footed, aren't you?" The dwarf pushed a wayward braid out of her eyes and left a streak of dirt across her forehead. "Name's Dorga. What brings you down here?"

"My agency is looking for this man," Sagiri replied, holding out the sketch. "Have you seen him?"

Dorga squinted. "Can't say that I have. You all look pretty much the same to me, no offense."

Dwarves were always a long shot, but it never hurt to be thorough. Sagiri copied the least ridiculous elements of Euram's description to a fresh sheet of paper, folded it together with the sketch, and said, "Would you mind passing these along down the tunnel, with instructions to send word of any recognition to Fuyo's Detective Agency in Rainwall?"

"Sure, I owe a few favors to your kind." Dorga tucked the papers into a pocket before adding, "You're with those detectives, right? Tell your man Raven he owes the gang a round of drinks."

Occasionally it was useful to have a fixed facial expression. "Certainly. I appreciate your help."

Before she left the Parliament Hall, Sagiri jotted down a summary of her findings for Fuyo. The thin scraps of circumstance filled less than three-quarters of a page, so she filled some of the emptiness with, "Crow has a social life. With dwarves. Who knew?"

* * *

Shigure returned first and had to be asked repeatedly to remove his feet from the surfaces Fuyo wanted to dust. "You could help," she pointed out.

He moved only the parts of himself required to blow a fat smoke ring and replied, "Yeah, I could." She dusted his bangs until he yelped.

When Sagiri finally arrived, Fuyo abandoned cleaning and picked up her notes. "So," she began, then paused. She opened the curtains to let sunlight flood the room before continuing, "What do you two think?"

"About Crow?" Shigure exhaled smoke through his nose. "He's a pain in the ass."

Sagiri shrugged and said, "He isn't Oboro."

"I meant about Euram's case, actually, but it's good to see we're all on the same page."

Shigure shrugged again. "His references are all dead and he's boring."

"His cane might have some connection to Lordlake," said Sagiri, "but no one from that delegation recognized him. No one from any delegation recognized him, in fact. He's a ghost."

"That's appropriate, since he last worked for a dead man." Fuyo passed around her notes, beaming, waiting for recognition of her ability to be something of a gumshoe when she wanted.

"Yep," said Shigure. "He's definitely either an undercover assassin or, y'know, some guy lying to get a job he's not qualified for."

Fuyo deflated. "Well, it's _suspicious_."

Sagiri perched on the back of the sofa like a friendly raptor. "What are the odds that Euram is completely wrong about this man?"

"We still have a file on him." Fuyo retrieved a folder from the "Prince of Falena, A-E" box, attracting Mr. Mouse to her shoulder in the process, and adjusted her glasses. Halfway through skimming the first page, she giggled. "My, that thing with the evil book was pretty funny! You know, in retrospect."

Shigure snorted. "Yeah, I rest my case."

"On the bright side," said Sagiri, startling Fuyo with her sudden proximity, "it should be easy to foil a plot that doesn't exist."

The door burst open and smacked against the wall. Fuyo jumped—generally she had to remind her fellow residents to make a little noise, please, to keep her aware of their movements—and her brain had run through half a dozen invasion scenarios by the time Shigure grunted a greeting: "Crow."

Raven slammed the door shut and crossed the room in a stiff, disheveled sulk. "Shut up. None of your business. Did not."

Fuyo waited until he'd ceased offering preemptive answers to ask, "Where have you been?"

"Nowhere. Minding my own business."

She glanced from him to her investigators, who were already exchanged their own inscrutable look. After a pause, Shigure sighed as if the weight of the world had been tipped onto his shoulders and said, "He broke into the palace storeroom."

"Really?" Fuyo ignored Raven's sputtering. "How do you figure that?"

Shigure shrugged. "Chuck's guarding it now, right? He knows about that damn rune."

"I don't think Crow ever realized that Chuck isn't dangerous," Sagiri added. "Chuck must have heard suspicious noises, grabbed at them, and got an afternoon's help sorting—" she sniffed— "old clothes."

Fuyo applauded. Glaring, Raven schlepped past her and drooped across the sofa, trailing a faint odor of sweat and mothballs. "His hands," he said acidly, "are bigger than my _head_. And he was still pissed off about last time."

"Oh, he's a big softy. He carries spiders outside because he doesn't want to kill them." Mr. Mouse, who had once been gently released into the wild after poking around the storeroom, nuzzled Fuyo's ear. She scratched under his chin. "And anyway, you deserved a little hard labor. What on earth possessed you to sneak into the storeroom?"

"It was the Sun Palace storeroom!" A mothball tumbled out of Raven's hair. Annoyed, he flicked it away and shook his head vigorously. "I'd be a laughingstock in the thieving community if I passed that up!"

Despite herself, Fuyo asked, "There's a community? What do you all _do_? Is there a potluck supper every week?"

"It's monthly and it's catered." At her look, Raven rolled his eyes. "What, you think I'm just gonna give away trade secrets?"

Fuyo shooed away the image of a company of ruffians voting on whether to have chicken or fish. "Just so we're clear," she said, setting Mr. Mouse back on the desk, "if you steal _anything_ while we're in Rainwall, family tree or otherwise, you'll spend the next month locked in a closet."

Raven contrived to look indignant. "Did you already forget I swore off stealing until he gets back? There's no fun in it if no one's got even half a chance to catch me!"

"Then what the hell," asked Shigure, "were you doing in the storeroom?"

"Browsing. Gotta keep my skills sharp, don't I?"

He got out only the first few notes of maniacal laughter before Sagiri elbowed him in the diaphragm.


	2. Day Two

Docking the boat in Rainwall tied a knot in Fuyo's chest. Every action was as familiar as memory; Oboro should have been sitting on the deck with his feet propped up, telling everyone that they were doing so well, he'd only get in the way if he tried to help. But Shigure's grumbling about manual labor was broken up by his squabbling with Raven, and the once picturesque view of the city was marred by rubble and construction.

Somewhere in Nagarea, Oboro hunted the criminals he used to call colleagues. He could handle himself. Fuyo knotted a rope tight and forbade herself from speculating beyond that.

"Finally," said Shigure, straightening up from a post. "Ugh. I'm starving."

"You had breakfast an hour ago," Sagiri replied, "and we should visit Luserina before we do anything else."

Fuyo added, "She might even feed us," which failed to appease him. She shrugged. "Either way, Sagiri's right. Come on, everybody."

"Everybody" did not include Raven, who had managed to disappear in broad daylight somewhere between fetching the ropes and setting foot on the pier. Career criminals, even domesticated ones, were not terribly reliable.

The road to the Barows mansion bustled with activity, even this early in the morning. Carts filled with construction supplies rolled past stations of vendors and volunteers. There was nothing like an oppressive occupation to really bring a community together.

The mansion itself had been stripped of Barows-related decorations and covered with painted wooden signs directing visitors to temporary housing, the various areas of the new seat of government, and the reparations department in the basement. Fuyo followed a series of green arrows upstairs to the hallway of the executive branch.

Behind a simple desk that had probably not been part of the Barows furniture collection sat a skinny boy who couldn't have been a day older than fifteen, his freckled face framed by precarious piles of paperwork. Fuyo longed to introduce him to efficient filing. As the group approached, he perked up with the eagerness of one who much preferred conversation to classification.

"Hello!" His voice cracked on the second syllable, which didn't seem to bother him. "Welcome to Rainwall's executive branch! Do you have an appointment?"

Shigure cocked his head. "Do we _need_ an appointment?"

"Um, of course. We're pretty busy around here." The boy opened a drawer stuffed with forms past the point of reasonable capacity. "So you have to work through the system, right? If you tell me what you're here for, I can get you to the right department."

"No need for that," said Sagiri. "We're just here to visit Luserina."

The boy stared at her as if she'd announced that the group had come to fill the city fountains with chocolate. "You'll, uh, definitely need an appointment for that. The mayor's _really_ busy."

Fuyo nodded. "I'm sure she is, but we're old friends. Could you just let her know we're in town?"

"She's really busy," he insisted. "Seriously, Alvan would kill me if I messed up her schedule."

Luserina's voice carried from a room behind him: "Bentwick? Who's—Fuyo!" Luserina poked her head around the corner and waved exuberantly. "Shigure! Sagiri! Come in, come in. It's so good to see you all again." As she shepherded the group into her sparse and tidy office, she frowned and scanned the area behind them. "Where's Oboro?"

"He's away on personal business." Fuyo didn't need to elaborate; Luserina had handled most of the prince's domestic affairs by the end of the war, to the point of sorting through his comment box. "I hear nothing but good things about your work here, you know. I don't think anyone would be surprised if you ended up in the parliament."

"Oh! Well, that might be preferable, actually..." Luserina pursed her lips and glanced at the hall before continuing, more loudly, "But that's all beside the point. How are you? What brings you to Rainwall?"

Fuyo settled in on one of a set of mismatched chairs. "The agency is officially re-opening for business, and we thought, what better place than here?"

A smile warmed Luserina's face. "And you're more than welcome. The city needs to feel vibrant and prosperous again. Did you just arrive?"

"Straight from the docks to your office," replied Shigure. "Fuyo's a real slave-driver." Fuyo retaliated by swatting his bangs out of his face. "See?"

Luserina let out a brief, bright laugh that seemed to surprise her. "Please," she said, "let me treat you to dinner at the inn. Dinner's next on my schedule—" she tapped fat black book that lay open on her desk, papers and tags poking out of it at all angles— "and Euram's added a note that I'm not to eat it alone at my desk."

Fuyo beamed. "That would be lovely. We've got so much to catch up on."

"I can meet you in a hour. Please, make yourselves comfortable while you wait. The gardens are open to visitors."

As they rose, three precise knocks sounded against the door frame. "Miss Barows," said an equally precise voice, "may I have a word?"

The good humor flickered out of Luserina's face as she turned to the hall. "Just 'Luserina,' please," she replied, in the tone of one who had said this very many times before. "I left that name behind."

Fuyo shifted until she could see the figure in the hall, then stiffened as she recognized the utterly unremarkable face of Alvan. His gaze flicked briefly over her and her companions as if they were fresh damage to the furniture.

Returning his attention to Luserina, he smiled politely. "We are what we are born to, Miss Barows. I'm afraid that I simply can't address a member of the nobility by her given name."

She shook her head. "There is no house of Barows anymore. My brother and I will not continue it."

"Ah, then perhaps one day there will be no house of Barows, but today you stand before me." He bowed. "Please forgive me my eccentricities. Identity is not so fluid in Stormfist."

"How fortunate, then, that we aren't in Stormfist."

They watched each other for several seconds, unblinking, until Alvan said, "The council requests your presence tomorrow to discuss the water supply situation."

Luserina exhaled heavily. "Of course. Please have the last two committee reports and the surveyor's assessment on my desk as soon as..." She trailed off as Alvan handed her three labeled folders. "Thank you. Now, would you please show my friends to the gardens? I'll be dining with them tonight."

He nodded, glanced at Fuyo as if she were damage to the furniture that he was now responsible for patching up, and bowed again before turning to leave. His left hand curled over the silver top of a cane. Fuyo caught herself wondering whether the stylized frog really did conceal a blade.

"I'll see you soon," said Luserina, settling in at her desk.

Alvan led them in silence past Bentwick's desk and down a flight of stairs, deploying his cane with practiced precision. "So, Alvan," said Fuyo when it became apparent that neither of her detectives felt chatty, "how do you like working for Luserina?"

He didn't so much as glance back at her. "I like most that my job doesn't involve entertaining her guests."

It was amazing he only had the limp, really; he struck Fuyo as someone who spent a lot of time getting his nose broken.

* * *

When Nether Gate ruined and refashioned Sagiri, no one involved had expected her to repurpose her skills like this. After entering the inn, she and Shigure had automatically seated themselves to share watch duty, and now she sipped her soup while absorbing a thousand little details at once: the body language of other patrons, the soft shadows where the firelight never quite reached, the pronounced thinness of Luserina's face, the pauses in Fuyo's stories that invited interjections. As usual, Shigure ignored the last category and shifted its share of attention to his pipe.

Fuyo was still doing most of the talking. She'd started in with questions until Sagiri kicked her in the ankle firmly enough to make her notice that Luserina needed to eat, not answer. A parade of detective work anecdotes saw Luserina through two bowls of soup and most of a loaf of bread.

"So," said Sagiri once the hunger seemed sated, "when did you decide to run for mayor?"

Luserina laughed softly, without much humor. "I didn't."

Shigure lowered his pipe. "_Why_ are you mayor?"

"Enough people voted for me regardless. My name was written on more ballots than anyone who actually campaigned." She fidgeted with her napkin as she continued, "I wanted to refuse, but after talking it over with Euram, I thought that Rainwall might need someone familiar to oversee the rebuilding. Anyone else would spend months just learning to navigate the system, and we don't have time for that."

"Makes sense," said Fuyo. "The people here must really adore you."

Luserina's cheeks reddened. "It's more complicated than that. Some of the people here realize how much administrative work I did in my father's place, but I'm afraid some of them still just want to see someone from the Barows house in charge." Her fingers plucked crumbs from a piece of bread and let them scatter over the tablecloth. "My ties to the royal family must have an effect, as well. The prince is so popular that everyone who sided with him is at an advantage."

Shigure snorted. "If that was all it took, Talgeyl would be answering to Chairperson Lyon."

With a little twitch of a smile, Luserina stopped mutilating her food and took a sip of her tea. "Well, it's complicated. I'm still not sure I'm making the right choice, but I'm doing the best I can. As soon as the city's a little more stable, I'm going to step down."

Fuyo's face heralded an unsubtle question. "Do you feel safe? Is anyone threatening you?"

"No, no, nothing like that. I'm worried about Rainwall, not myself." This time her fingers picked at her napkin. "Euram's worried about me, but Euram also thinks that any council member who disagrees with me is plotting assassination."

"I'm sure he means well," said Fuyo. "Speaking of which—" the worst part, Sagiri thought, was that she really did think she was being subtle— "what's the story with that grumpy assistant of yours?"

The napkin was granted a reprieve. "Please excuse Alvan. He has... a strong personality, but I honestly don't know how I'd keep track of everything without him. And it's good, I think, to have hired someone from Stormfist; it's past time to put that feud behind us."

"Stormfist, huh?" Fuyo leaned in closer, ignoring Sagiri's nudges to her ankle. "Must have been hard to check out his references."

Luserina shrugged, and the angle of her eyebrows suggested that the game was up. "When he first applied, I sent letters to his previous employers and received word that they had all passed away within the last few years. Alvan confessed that he exaggerated his employment history. He lost his position in Stormfist at the beginning of the war, and he spent the last two years living destitute outside the city. When he heard about my reconstruction efforts, he came to Rainwall."

"Do you believe him?" asked Fuyo.

Luserina's mouth quirked. "Not quite, but he's a very good secretary." Setting her chin in her hand, she asked mildly, "Who hired you?"

Fuyo deflated. "That's, uh, confidential. _If_ it's true. What makes you think—"

"This is why," Sagiri said, "we do the investigating, and Fuyo manages the books." This time Fuyo kicked her in the ankle.

Luserina managed to look even more tired than she had been. "Just don't disturb anyone, please. Everything's very sensitive right now, and the last thing I need is for Alvan to find out he's being investigated."

"We're always discreet," said Fuyo, reaching across the table to pat Luserina's hand. "Don't worry."

The space behind Fuyo shivered; Sagiri had drawn a kunai before the shadows peeled away from Raven, who snatched Fuyo's leftover bread and made her yelp. "_Always_ discreet," he said cheerfully.

Sagiri slid her weapon back into coat. Luserina's face lit with a surprised and surprisingly genuine smile, as if seeing Raven had somehow improved her day. Little wonder she was the mayor; this was a level of political pageantry that few could manage at the end of a long day.

"Someday," said Shigure around a mouthful of smoke, "you're going to get stabbed doing that." Raven ignored him in favor of exchanging pleasantries with Luserina.

Fuyo huffed and took a soothing sip of tea. "Where have you been all day, Crow?" she asked at the first polite opportunity.

"Eh, you know. Things." He dipped the end of his ill-gotten bread into Luserina's soup and bit off a chunk.

Sagiri caught Shigure's eye. He tipped his shoulder in a half-shrug and blew a smoke ring.

"Since we've finished dinner—"

"We have?" came out as "Ee aff?" with a backup chorus of crumbs.

"—we should let Luserina get back to her work," Fuyo continued, undeterred. She turned to Luserina. "Thank you so much for having dinner with us. I'm sure we'll see you around Rainwall, but feel free to stop by our boat if you want to visit or just relax somewhere quiet. We'll be on our best behavior."

"Thank you." Luserina dabbed at her lips with her napkin before standing. "Please come see me if you need anything; I'll tell Bentwick not to give you any trouble."

Raven swallowed a lump of soggy bread that by all rights should have choked him and put himself between Luserina and the door. "Hey, it's dark out. Walk you home?"

Fuyo coughed on a sip of tea. "Crow! What do you think you're doing?"

"Being a gentlemen." He squawked as Fuyo grabbed his wrist and dragged him aside for a few moments' heated whispering, which ended with his pulling a face, offering Luserina his arm, and exiting with an air of offended dignity.

Once they were well out of earshot, Fuyo said, "I told him to stake out the mansion and make sure Alvan isn't lurking around at night. And not to steal _anything_, no matter how unattended it looks."

Sagiri fingered the tip of a kunai through her coat. "Do you think Alvan's a threat? If he's trying to assassinate Luserina, he isn't doing a very good job of it. He manages her schedule; she'd be dead by now if he really wanted her to be."

"We can't all be Nether Gate," Fuyo replied. "No one ever said he was a _good_ assassin."

Shigure snorted. "You're gonna make us spy on this guy just because you don't like him."

She crossed her arms. "Rudeness and murderousness aren't mutually exclusive."


	3. Day Three

Within minutes of hanging her new "Yes, we're OPEN" sign on the door, Fuyo heard a knock, a creak, and a familiarly creaky voice calling, "Hello!"

She bustled out of the office to find the young gate-keeper of the executive branch. He stuck out his hand awkwardly and said, "Um, hello. I remember you from yesterday. I'm Bentwick."

Fuyo shook it with more enthusiasm than he was prepared to accept. "Fuyo. My colleagues Shigure and Sagiri are in the back, and I'd introduce you to our surveillance expert if he ever kept regular business hours. What can we do for you?"

"You're detectives, right?" He bit his lower lip. "I mean, of course you are, sorry. It's on your sign. Do you investigate, um, missing things?"

"Thoroughly and discreetly, and at very reasonable prices!" Fuyo steered him to a chair, where he perched on the edge of the cushion, and sat opposite him with a fresh notepad and a pencil. "What's gone missing?"

Shadow-silent, Sagiri slipped out of the kitchen and set a cup of tea in front of Bentwick. He glanced uncertainly at it and kept his hands in his lap. "Well, it's a little weird, I guess. We used to get rats in the executive branch, big mean ones. Pretty sure they were coming up from reparations, since they don't always clean so well down there. Anyway, I put poison out, and that took care of them for a while. In our branch, at least. That was... three months ago? Four?"

Fuyo wrote down both estimates, for the sake of keeping her hand moving while Bentwick wended his way to the point.

"Anyway, I heard scratching noises in the basement yesterday, like maybe rat noises. They're really filthy down there in reparations, you have no idea. So I went to get the poison and nip the rat problem in the bud this time, only when I checked the cupboard, it was gone."

Fuyo tapped her pencil against the notepad. "Did you check whether the reparations department borrowed it?"

He shook his head. "They can't. It was in our locked cupboard, and only executive branch people have keys. So I asked around, and nobody said they took it." His fingers knotted together. "I mean, maybe it's nothing, but it makes me a little nervous."

An image of Alvan, a bottle of poison, and Luserina's lunch flashed into Fuyo's mind. "Have you told the mayor about this?"

"No, she's all stressed out about the water supply situation. And it might be nothing, right? It could have gone missing a while ago, maybe." Bentwick worried his lip again. "I kept it in the back, and it's not like I checked on it every time I opened the cupboard. Sometimes you just need paperclips, you know?"

"I know." Fuyo passed him a business card. "But don't you worry! We'll get to the bottom of this in no time. That's our daily rate on the back. Keep in mind that we offer accommodating payment plans and waive the deposit in cases of hardship or emergency, so don't fret about your finances."

Bentwick reached into his pocket and came up with ten potch and a crumpled paper.

"We'll just get started investigating," she said gently, folding his hand closed, "and we'll worry about that sort of thing later, okay?"

He rose, thanked her, and scurried off back to work. As an afterthought, Fuyo leaned out the doorway and called after him, "Tell your wealthy friends about us!"

When she returned, Shigure was examining her clipboard critically. "When do we start taking cases that aren't a complete pain in the ass?"

"Don't be difficult." Fuyo reached over to brush his bangs out of his eyes, eliciting an annoyed grunt as he slipped out of range. "While you're snooping on Alvan, just snoop a little more thoroughly to see if there's rat poison anywhere suspicious. And don't take Mr. Mouse along for this one," she added, in response to whiskers twitching urgently at her ankle.

Sagiri emerged to retrieve the teacup, posture slipping in a very subtle show of disappointment when she saw that it was still full. Her gaze flicked up abruptly enough to give Fuyo half a moment's warning before the door burst open.

"Morning," said Raven. Sagiri let him take the teacup as he strolled past; he frowned briefly at the coolness of it, then took a sip anyway. "What's for breakfast?"

"It's mid-morning," Fuyo replied. Undeterred, he headed into the kitchen and began noisily to scavenge. "Don't you have anything to report? From your stakeout?"

"Nah, all's quiet in Rainwall. Nobody even tried to assassinate anybody." He found the grapes that Fuyo had been saving and helped himself. "Mission accomplished, time for a nap."

"You realize you're going back tonight," said Sagiri.

"Eh, I can accomplish a mission more than once. Look, I'm _contributing_." He worked a grape seed out of his teeth and began whistling.

Fuyo narrowed her eyes. "You're awfully chipper for someone who's been up all night."

Raven stopped whistling long enough to say, "Satisfaction of a job well done, right? I'm taking pride in honest work, ah ha ha ha ha!" The end of his laughter slid into a happy humming sound, which lingered on the air even after he closed the bedroom door behind himself.

Shigure sighed heavily. "You're going to ask us to follow him tonight."

Fuyo nodded. "Just find out whether he's doing anything even close to a proper stakeout."

"How about I save us the trouble and just tell you he isn't?"

"Professional pride," said Sagiri. Sometimes her smile made it difficult to tell to what extent she was teasing. "We should go soon; Alvan's coworkers won't interrogate themselves."

Shigure packed tobacco into his pipe. "Lemme finish smoking first."

Before Fuyo could take issue with his use of "finish," another knock came at the door. She brightened. Eventually, someone with money had to come along.

Her greeting reworked itself as Euram slipped inside. At least he was a paying customer.

"Have you exposed that blackguard for the violent menace he is?" he asked, hands clasped eagerly. "Are you ready to drag his dark plots into the merciless light of day?"

Fuyo aimed for diplomacy. "We've found him very unpleasant, but we're still gathering evidence."

"'Unpleasant'? The man is devoid of redeeming qualities! He oozes malevolence! He—"

"Can't investigate him," said Shigure, without bothering to take his pipe out of his mouth, "while you've got us here complaining about him."

Euram took a deep breath. "Yes, of course. I just wanted to check in. You haven't accrued any, ah, expenses, have you?"

"None so far." Fuyo smiled and patted his shoulder. "Don't worry. We won't let anything happen to your sister."

"Thank you." Euram attempted to smile back. "If I may, I have another small request for you: please don't alarm my mother. She's doing much better now, but she's still frail, and I fear that any shock might drive her back into seclusion."

As Fuyo reassured him that her agency guaranteed discretion, Shigure lowered his pipe and said, "Wait, she's out of her room? Where other people can see her?"

"Well, yes, of course." Euram looked a bit flustered. "I'm sure you noticed that we donated the manor to the public good."

"Hmph." Shifting in his chair, Shigure pulled a handful of potch from somewhere on his person and held it out to Sagiri, whose smile appeared genuine. "Guess you were right."

Fuyo shot them both a glare before distracting Euram with a turn toward the door. "Anyway, we have some leads to follow up on today. We'll get to the bottom of that guy in no time, so just count on us!"

Once Euram had been coaxed outside, Fuyo flipped the sign to "Sorry, we're CLOSED," shut the door, and leaned against it as she exhaled.

"Still pretty sure he was talking to a skeleton in a wig and a dress," Shigure muttered.

Sagiri jangled her potch. "Don't be a sore loser. Luserina would have told us if that were the case."

"You sure? She's a little weird, too."

Fuyo exhaled slowly, to a count of five, before saying, "All right, that's too much speculating, not enough investigating. Go find out if Alvan's been up to any suspicious behaviors, and see if you can track down that rat poison."

Once they were gone, she settled in at her desk for a soothing round of filing. She'd just gotten into a good rhythm when there came a knock at the door. What was the point of a nicely painted sign if no one read it?

She answered anyway, because business was business, and found a young woman with a jaunty little hat and a sack full of envelopes, one of which was proffered. "Letter for you, ma'am," said the girl. "Tips appreciated."

* * *

Shigure had called breaking into Alvan's office, and Sagiri didn't fight him for it; she'd just won a long-standing bet, after all, and she tended to have more patience for questioning than he did. She played lookout as he scaled a tree outside the windows of the executive branch hallway, then strolled around to the mansion's intended entrance.

Over the course of an hour, she worked out that most government employees knew Alvan, and none particularly liked him. "Social skills of a wounded boar" proved a popular complaint. No history of violence or threats emerged, however, and several workers who took the time to chat expressed a grudging respect for the man's work ethic.

"I don't think he sleeps," said one of the security guards, without a hint of hyperbole. "I try to check in when folks work late, see if they're all right, and everyone else says, 'Good evening, Miss Sasha,' 'Doing just fine here, Miss Sasha,' 'Can't believe I fell asleep at my desk again, Miss Sasha,' that kind of thing. Expect him. He just looks at me like I'm something he scraped off his boot. Don't think he blinks, either."

"He never says sorry for bumping into you," said one of the messenger boys. "This one time, he yelled at me 'cause _he_ tripped _me_ with his dumb cane."

"Always gets his forms in on time, and never a mistake," said one of the clerks. "So that's nice. Outside of paperwork, of course, he's a complete ass."

A few people speculated that he had to be blackmailing Luserina to maintain his position, but everyone who dealt with his work directly seemed to have no trouble accepting that he was, in his own unpleasant way, essential to the daily functioning of Rainwall's new government. Which was, in Sagiri's unprofessional political opinion, something of a mess.

Having uncovered nothing damning about Alvan, she headed down to the reparations department and asked the least grouchy-looking employee about the rats.

"We don't have rats," he replied.

Sagiri sniffed. The basement smelled like a variety of unwanted things, but the blend contained no unambiguous notes of rodent, rodent waste, or rodent poison. "So you've taken care of the infestation?"

He glowered at her and bit off each word: "We. Don't. Have. Rats." Her steady smile almost certainly wasn't helping his mood.

The next person Sagiri tried to question brandished a pen at her, so she sidled off to investigate the dark corners of the room. None of the employees seemed to care what she did, as long as she wasn't social, and the citizens queuing up in the apparently vain hope that someone would assist them had no attention in anyone without a stamp and an air of authority.

She found plenty of filth but no recent evidence of rats, dead or otherwise. An incongruous sack of potatoes showed no signs of gnawing.

"No rats in basement," she recorded dutifully in her notes.

Shigure was waiting for her outside, dozing on a tree limb with his pipe dangling from his lip. His eyelids parted slightly as she climbed up to join him. "Hey."

"Hey." She sat down beside him. They had a nice view of several executive branch windows from here, including the one in Luserina's office. Luserina herself appeared utterly absorbed in a stack of papers. "Did you find anything interesting?"

He snorted. "Guy couldn't be more boring if he tried. Not a damn thing in that office but files and pens. Almost enough to make me think he's a little suspicious after all."

"No rat poison?"

"Found an empty bottle in one of the cabinets, but it was obvious someone else put it there. Like, stupidly obvious. Everything else is spotless, and then the guy just crams a dusty bottle back in the corner? Right."

Sagiri swung her legs idly in the air. "No one likes him, so you've got your pick of who might want to frame him for the very serious crime of stealing the rat poison. There aren't any rats in the mansion, by the way."

"Riveting stuff, huh?" Shigure scratched his back against the bark. "This is the stupidest case."

"Stupider than that missing person case in Haud?"

"That was a different kind of stupid."

Through the glass, Sagiri watched one of the messenger boys appear in the doorway with a steaming kettle. Luserina nodded, measured tea leaves from a tin on her desk into her little teapot, and went back to reading as the boy filled the pot with water. As he finished, Alvan arrived and swatted the boy out of his way with his cane, earning what looked like a scolding from Luserina.

"I'm surprised no one is plotting against _him_," said Sagiri. Shigure shrugged.

As the tea steeped, Alvan sat down opposite Luserina's desk and read to her from a clipboard in tones too muted to carry through the glass. She interjected occasionally, prompting him to make quick marks with his pen. After what Sagiri considered a ruinously long steeping period, Luserina poured herself a cup of tea and held up an empty cup to Alvan.

He shook his head, and she raised her cup to her lips. A split-second later, fast enough to shake through Sagiri like a flashback, he swung his cane into the cup and sent it shattering against the wall.

Shigure flitted to the end of the branch. "What the _hell_?"

Luserina mouthed a similar sentiment, then jumped again as Shigure forced the window open. Sagiri gripped kunai between her fingers and held them to catch the light. For an instant, Alvan flowed into a defensive stance, but his right leg buckled and left him jabbing his cane into the floor for balance.

"Poison," he said, chin stiff and lip curled halfway to a sneer. "Test it if you don't believe me."

Kunai still in hand, Sagiri slid through the window frame and took the lid off the teapot. The signs were subtle but unmistakable: a pale sheen on the surface of the tea, a bitter scent covered almost entirely by over-steeping. Inside the tea tin she found minuscule white crystals nestled nearly imperceptibly among the dark leaves.

She looked up at Luserina. "Someone who has access to this tin tried to kill you."

"I—I keep it in my desk." Luserina had the distant, rattled look of one who was having trouble with the transition from mundane workplace stress to attempted murder. She settled shakily back into her seat. "Only Alvan and the security guards and I have keys. Someone must have picked the lock."

Sagiri nodded and shook the tin, watching the crystals wink. If this was indeed the missing rat poison, Bentwick's approach to pest control was far past overkill. "This leaves a residue. Check the hands of every security guard who's entered the building since your last cup of tea yesterday."

"Who are you to give orders here?" The cold formality of Alvan's tone began to crack: "Why are you _smiling_?"

Shigure bristled. "None of your damn business. And you have a real eye for poison, don't you, you—"

"_Please._" Luserina thumped both palms on her desk as she rose. "Let's not waste time fighting. Alvan, round up security, then pull yesterday's paperwork. I need to know if anyone unusual was in the building. Shigure, Sagiri—you should probably talk to Fuyo."

This was her mayoral tone, and it didn't invite debate. Already her blood had begun to stir beneath her pallor.

Shigure slipped back out the window with Sagiri just behind him. When they reached the ground, she caught his eye, inclined her head, and saw her own thought reflected: _Nether Gate_.

* * *

The door opened without anyone knocking first, and Raven was still snoring in the bedroom, which meant that the detectives were home. Fuyo bounded out of her office, letter in hand, and said, "I heard from Talgeyl, and Alvan's definitely shady. You won't believe—"

"He's ex-Nether Gate." Shigure flopped into a chair. "Also, unless he's playing a stupidly complicated game, he's not the one trying to kill Luserina."

"That would be the one who put an extremely potent poison in Luserina's tea leaves," Sagiri added, perching on the armrest of the sofa. "Someone who knows that she does terrible things to tea and wouldn't notice the smell or flavor."

Shigure added, "And someone who thought we're the kind of detectives who fall for obvious frame jobs. Seriously, I'm insulted."

Fuyo's initial surge of petty disappointment didn't last long. "Oh, my," she managed. "Is Luserina okay?"

Sagiri nodded. "Alvan saved her life. Imagine how much more insufferable he'll be now."

"Ugh." Shigure grimaced as he lit his pipe. "Now she'll never fire that bastard. Should've left that bottle in his office for security to find."

"Can we go back," said Fuyo, trying with difficulty not to yell, "to the part where someone _is_ trying to kill Luserina?"

"Of course," Sagiri replied. "Luserina was rounding up security when we left, but I doubt they'll find anything. Whoever did this was clever enough to attempt a frame job."

Fuyo took a long, quiet moment to clean her glasses on her skirt. She took a deep breath as she set them back in place. "All right, then. All in favor of doing the job Euram wants rather than the job he thinks he wants?"

This got her a nod from Sagiri and an especially fat smoke ring from Shigure, so she considered the motion passed. "Good," she continued. "It doesn't matter as much now, but I did get a letter from Talgeyl. He said that the frog cane rings a bell because he almost caught the thief who stole it from Lord Rovere's mansion just a few months after Rovere's death. Wounded the guy badly in the leg, he says." She folded up the letter. "And now he's Nether Gate, too. Quite a résumé this one has, huh?"

"Yes," said Sagiri mildly. "And who would ever hire assassins and thieves for honest work?"

It was still hard to tell when she was teasing and when she was genuinely hurt. Fuyo was spared erring on the side of caution when Sagiri added, "At least this case is less stupid now, isn't it?"

Shigure grunted at her. "This just makes it stupider. Why'd Oboro even go to Nagarea when the Nether Gate family reunion is in Rainwall?"

This was never a good place for the conversation to go. Fuyo redirected it with, "Does he look familiar at all, now that you know he was in the organization?"

Sagiri shook her head. "If he wasn't in our division, we might never have seen him."

Fuyo considered this. "Do you think he can tell about you two?"

"Yeah, probably," Shigure replied. "He saw us in action, and Nether Gate doesn't raise fools."

Murderers and maniacs and heartless husks and broken children, but never fools. Oboro didn't like to share stories, but he'd alluded to enough to break Fuyo's heart several times over. "All right," she said, pushing those thoughts aside. "I want you two searching for clues that can lead us to the real assassin, and I want you to keep an eye on Luserina. Just because Alvan saved her life doesn't mean I trust him to do it again. If Crow's slacking off on the job, take shifts on the stakeout and I'll deal with him tomorrow."

They left after Shigure had completed his usual ritual of insisting that he be allowed to finish smoking his pipe, balking when he was denied, and complaining long enough to smoke half of it. Fuyo sat down with her files on Alvan and arranged them around Talgeyl's letter.

Stealing a distinctive cane from a dead man only began to make sense in the context of a plot to claim a false connection, and Alvan didn't so much as hint at ties to Lordlake. If he'd stolen the cane for money, he'd had years now to sell it. In a different case, she might have suspected a superstitious motive or a desire to offset injury with a trophy, but Nether Gate didn't nurture sentiment.

Had he thrown in his lot with the Godwins' secret revival of Nether Gate? Or had he moved on to aimless petty thievery when the Queen disbanded them? Oboro would have been able to tell; he blended Shigure and Sagiri's observational skills with a perspective on Nether Gate that almost no one else could claim.

Too much speculating, not enough investigating.

Fuyo became aware of sunset when Raven sauntered into the kitchen, yawning and stretching, and began to ransack. Somehow, his snack-making process tended to require getting all the knives dirty. "I'll give you a three hundred potch advance," she called, "if you eat out. And go straight to work afterward."

The boat was quiet again in short order, and the cutlery was spared an unnecessary washing. Fuyo pulled every file she could think of that might mention Rovere.

At long last she found something worthwhile, buried in an old case of senatorial adultery. Sagiri had dutifully paraphrased a conversation she overheard while staking out one of the lovers' favorite rendezvous spots; it involved a fair bit of gossip about the young man newly serving as Lord Rovere's assistant, who performed his tasks in precise silence and blended into a room like a moth into tree bark. Polite, reliable boy. Unnerving. Anyone's guess where he'd come from, since on the rare occasion he spoke to anyone but Rovere, his accent perfectly mimicked that of the person addressing him.

Oboro must have realized at the time, but what was the point in interfering with a former child of Nether Gate who, all things considered, seemed to be adjusting well?

There was something here, Fuyo was certain—something tangled up in Rovere and the Barows and the bleak fury of losing the person who put a broken world back together. Rovere inspired sentiment. She could follow the claiming of the cane, the infiltration of Rainwall, and the deep bitterness, but keeping Luserina alive didn't fit at all neatly.

Fuyo's stomach growled. Lunch seemed like a distant memory, so she took a break to go through the leftovers in the kitchen and see how many containers were not victims of Raven's penchant for eating all but the last bite. He'd left her two grapes, probably so that he could claim not to have left her only one.

She had cobbled together an acceptable sandwich when the door opened amid stomping and Shigure's shout of, "I don't want to talk about it!"

"Talk about what?" Fuyo abandoned sandwich and hastened out to intercept him. Neither he nor Sagiri appeared to be bleeding, at least. "What happened?"

"Shigure's traumatized," Sagiri replied, and Fuyo hadn't the faintest idea whether she was teasing. "We found out what Raven's getting up to."

"Would you just shut up about it?" Scowling with the full intensity of someone who'd had to work for his facial expressions, Shigure slumped in his favorite chair.

Sagiri beckoned Fuyo closer and whispered, "He's sleeping with Luserina."

"He's _what_. He's with. _What_!" Those words wouldn't form questions, or even sentences, so Fuyo tried others: "You're sure that's what you saw?" When Sagiri nodded, she let out a series of unhappy little noises and said, "You're really, really sure that—"

"Yes! Damn it! Stop talking about it!" Shigure pressed the heels of his hands to his ears.

Sagiri patted him on the back. To Fuyo she said, "Yes. Very sure. We got a lot of practice being sure with all those senators."

"Oh, how _could_ he?" Fuyo rubbed her temples until she forced out another line of thought. "Isn't there any way that this might have been a misunderstanding?"

"If it was," Sagiri replied, "it was an enthusiastic misunderstanding."

Shigure glared at her through his bangs. "I can still hear you."

Chewing on her lip, Fuyo tried to envision a scenario in which Luserina had been hit with some sort of curse that caused the disappearance of her clothing as well as the clothing of anyone looking directly at her, and if Fuyo was willing to suspend her belief from threads that tenuous, then surely she could stretch them a little thinner and assume that this curse also put Luserina's life in immediate peril unless she...

Unable to find a predicate that kept her belief from plummeting, Fuyo sighed. "Oh, dear."

During the ensuing pause, Shigure lowered his hands, stuffed thin shreds of tobacco into his pipe, and took advantage of his fire rune. He puffed purposefully before saying, "We're never going to talk about this again."

"Well, certainly never with Euram."

That, Fuyo decided, was teasing.


	4. Day Four

Raven rolled in a full hour after dawn, whistling. Fuyo caught his arm and said, in a voice Sagiri otherwise only heard directed by Shigure in his most stubborn moods, "I'd like a word with you."

Shigure glanced up from his seat and stuffed paper into his ears. He was funny sometimes; spying on cheating spouses and their lovers always made him blush, though he'd fervently deny any color change after the fact, but Raven and Luserina had taken him to an exciting new level of flustered. That was the point of family, maybe: hyperbolic reactions to things that didn't matter, and unwavering acceptance of things that did.

As Fuyo dragged her nervously bemused quarry toward her office, Sagiri slipped up to the crawlspace above it. Mr. Mouse scampered alongside her as she crawled over to the tiny peepholes in the ceiling. If Fuyo really expected privacy, she reasoned, this conversation wouldn't be happening anywhere near Sagiri.

In the room below, Fuyo held the door open, foot tapping against the floor. Raven regarded the abundance of lights set around the office and hesitated before coming inside, rune glowing ineffectually through his glove. Fuyo shut the door firmly behind him.

"Aren't these lamps lovely?" she asked. "They really do brighten up the place; I might have to consider keeping them lit all the time. Have a seat, please."

He had a seat, with palpable reluctance. As Fuyo strode behind the desk, he said, "Look, if something's missing, I didn't steal it. Thieves' honor."

"That's not what this is about." Fuyo set her palms on the desk, leaned forward, and loomed. "What did I ask you to do?"

"Stake out Luserina's room." Raven huffed and crossed his arms. "Just like I've _been_ doing a damn good job of."

"And would you agree," she asked with metallic sweetness, "that surveillance might best be conducted from somewhere other than the subject's own bed?"

He scowled. "You never said she wasn't supposed to know I was keeping an eye on her."

"I never said not to seduce her, either, because some things just go without saying!"

"What the hell?" Raven's eyebrows drew together like jousting caterpillars. "Listen, she _asked_ me to sneak in through her window. We've got history together. And anyway, how is that any of your business? I thought we were trying to figure out who's trying to kill her, not who's—"

Fuyo's unclear gesturing cut him off. Apparently she had been taken far enough off her guard to let her anger slip away; her voice was much less tight as she said, "I... all right. Look. If you're running off for a romp with your... girlfriend? No, I don't actually want to know what the word is. Anyway, you can't call it work. It's not actually work. And you've upset Shigure and Sagiri."

This was half-true. Sagiri had mostly just thought that it was nice to see Luserina enjoying herself for a change.

Raven scoffed. "Oh, _they're_ upset. Next time they can tell me they're staking out my stakeout, and I'll close the curtains."

"Please stop calling it a stakeout. I can't send you on real stakeouts if that's what you think a stakeout is. A little professionalism, please." Fuyo rubbed her forehead for a moment, then continued, "But we've overreacted a bit, maybe. I don't think they'd care—I don't think _I'd_ care—if they—we—didn't think of you as sort of... family." She cleaned her glasses to avoid watching his reaction, then cleared her throat. "So, yes. It's your business. As long as you don't let it get in the way of the case."

"No worries there."

"All right, then." Fuyo exhaled and set her glasses in place. "Well, congratulations, Crow. You're a dirty little secret."

He wagged his finger and flashed her a self-satisfied grin. "Ah-ah-ah, I'm a _democratically elected mayor's_ dirty little secret."

Fuyo stared at him for a long, blank moment before shaking her head. "Just keep in mind that I'm not paying you for having sex. That's—well, it_can_ be work, I guess, but it's definitely not detective work."

Raven scowled, then brightened. "But I still get paid for thwarting that assassination attempt, right?"

The discussion moved rapidly out of the office, and Sagiri climbed down to follow it.

* * *

As promised, a rather subdued Bentwick let Fuyo and her detectives through without trouble. They made their way to Luserina's office, where she sat signing forms and Alvan brewed a cup of tea. He glanced at the visitors, refused to acknowledge them, and sniffed and sipped the tea before passing the cup to his boss.

"Hi," said Fuyo, finally capturing Luserina's attention. "Got a minute to talk?"

"I'll make one." Luserina set her pen down. "How confidential of a talk?"

Sagiri offered, "You may not want Alvan to be present."

"Can I not be present?" asked Shigure.

Luserina glanced between the two of them, then turned a firm stare on Alvan. He returned it for several seconds before sneering and heading for the door, catching Fuyo's toe under his cane on the way with intentional precision. She bit her tongue against a yelp and glowered at his back until the door closed behind it.

Fuyo took the seat Alvan had vacated and leaned in near enough to lower her voice. "Someone tried to kill you again last night, didn't they?"

From the look of Luserina's face, she hadn't slept much afterward. "Yes. Someone sneaked into my bedroom with a knife while I was asleep, and, well, it didn't work." Obviously she hadn't made a minute to construct a plausible version of the story.

"It just didn't work?" asked Sagiri.

Shigure made a face at her. "Yeah, sure, drag this out. That's fun."

Fuyo cleared her throat. "Did it maybe not work because the assassin ran into the invisible body curled up next to you?"

Luserina stiffened, suddenly very intent on her tea. "You heard this from Raven."

"He didn't exactly volunteer it, but we figured it out." Probably better not to mention the eye-witness portion of the figuring. When she remained silent, Fuyo added, "It's okay. We're not—"

"It's not like that," Luserina blurted, and Fuyo had no idea what "that" had been implied. Her fingers laced and unlaced as she picked her way through an explanation: "We started talking, back during the war—I used to go down the kitchen at night for tea, and sometimes he was down there, and—please don't look at me like that—I wanted someone to talk to, and it would have been selfish of me to burden the prince..."

"So this is why Oboro said we needed a counselor," Shigure muttered.

Luserina's cheeks darkened. "And it was wartime. People were doing all sorts of things."

Fuyo sighed. "You talked to Kyle, didn't you?"

The blush drained away as Luserina frowned. "And _you've_ been talking to Euram, haven't you? This is—he's—" She took a deep breath. "With all due respect, I'm an adult. As long as I'm not continuing the family line, it is absolutely none of his business who I'm not continuing it with." She had her mayoral face on now; no unwanted color stood a chance of making it to the surface of her cheeks. "I'm very sorry that my brother wasted your time."

No sense holding the bag closed once the cat had bolted. "That's not actually what he hired us to investigate," Fuyo said. "Believe me, we're not hard enough up for business to investigate a friend's love life."

Luserina tilted her head, then sighed. "He thought Alvan was trying to kill me, didn't he?"

"Which was incorrect," said Sagiri. "But someone _is_ trying to kill you."

"Actually," Luserina began, then glanced at the door and dropped her voice a little lower. "Alvan told me that he did want to kill me, before he came here. Nothing personal—he wanted to wipe out the entire Barows line for killing Lord Rovere."

Fuyo scarcely resisted the impulse to crow that she had figured that much out.

"After he realized that Lord Rovere wouldn't actually have wanted that, he just wanted to destroy us by revealing our dark secrets to the world. Now that he's been here a little while, I think he's realized that the world already knows them all."

In the ensuing silence, Shigure coughed on what had been a poorly timed smoke ring. "And he told you this because...?"

"We've bonded. Didn't you notice how well we were getting along when you came in?"

Another pause. "You get very confessional when you're tired," said Shigure.

"She's also been taken off-guard," Sagiri added, "and she's obviously under stress."

"Speaking of which," said Fuyo, hoping to put the conversation back on course, sensible segue or no, "whoever came after you ended up on the wrong end of that knife, so we should be able to pick out a suspect by checking for fresh stab wounds. It's almost certainly somewhere who works here."

Luserina frowned. "I haven't seen anyone wearing bandages or unusual clothing today. Or limping—it was hard to tell in the dark, but I think Raven stabbed the attacker in the leg."

Shigure hummed around his pipe. "Maybe we should check for clues by seeing what's been planted in Alvan's office today."

"What's the empty bottle equivalent of a knife?" Sagiri locked eyes with Shigure for an instant, and Fuyo could almost feel pieces slotting into place between them. There was something half-magic about them in these moments, as if they had little runes burned into their brains.

"No rats," said Sagiri.

"Can't beat Crow in a fight," said Shigure. "Tell Alvan to tackle Bentwick; he'll probably get a kick out of it."


	5. Day Five

Getting Luserina to leave her office for tea before an hour that Fuyo considered bedtime proved too difficult, so Fuyo brought tea to Luserina's office, instead. She was in too good a mood to be offended when Alvan made tea for Luserina and completely ignored her.

"Long day?" Fuyo asked, settling in. "I brought tiny cakes. You can pick your favorite as soon as Alvan decides they're safe."

Luserina smiled thinly, then rested her forehead in her hand. "Has it only been a day? We offered Bentwick exile if he told us who hired him, and everything's moved in a blur since then." She took a sip of tea before continuing, "When he saw a boat full of detectives at the dock, he must have thought someone was on to him. I actually feel sorry for him, a bit."

Fuyo cleared her throat. "He did try to kill you. Twice."

"Only a bit, I said." Luserina shifted, sinking a little deeper into her chair. "It was a city council member who hired him, the one who quietly hated my father for decades and would have won the election if so many people hadn't written my name in. He thought—he didn't hate me. Nothing personal, he said. He really thought that killing me was best for Rainwall."

The mood needed lightening, so Fuyo made an effort: "I'm sure the next time someone wants to kill you, it _will_ be personal."

This earned a little huff of a laugh. "I can only hope. It's so clear to me now that I'm doing more harm than good in Rainwall. I've called new elections for the first of the month, and as soon as there's a new mayor, I'm leaving for Sol Falena. I think I can do a lot more good behind the scenes in the central government than I ever can here."

"Sol Falena will be happy to have you, I'm sure." Fuyo smiled encouragingly before adding, "What about Euram?"

Luserina tapped her fingers delicately against her teacup. "It's his choice. If he wants to stay in Rainwall, he should be fine; he doesn't make people nervous the way I do."

They fell quiet a moment, sipping tea companionably. The ambient orange light of the sunset spilled in through the window, around the silhouette of the tree.

"First of the month, right?" said Fuyo. "We've got a client who wants us to solve the case of where her son is seeing that girl she's told him a thousand times not to see, and I'm sure that can keep us busy long enough to give you a ride to Sol Falena."

Luserina's smile was bright and soft and almost not tired. "I'd like that."


End file.
